Now Pokémon is already a pretty cutsie franchise. Of course there are some though ferocious beasts to deal with as well and quite a few world ending schemes to be had but overall we can still say a majority of our pocket monster pals can be deemed cute. Now what if we told you this cuteness can be put in overdrive? A game so sweet hat 9 out of 10 dentist recommend that you do not play this game. Chibi Pinki’s teeth might have rotted away.. she can’t stop smiling! It’s time to review Pokémon Sweet version.
The Concept
This game is sooo fun! It’s like super cute and amazing and sweet, but it’s also a bit tricky to get. You see Pokémon Sweet version is a Romhack.. that means it used to be a rom for a gameboy emulator and some pretty nifty egghead people changed it around into a new game. Kinda like how you would find a person you like well enough but are a bit tired off.. then peel off all their flesh leaving just their vital systems intact and then building a new person from it..but less bloody. So it means you have to download an emulator and the rom. If you are unlucky you’d have to download an emulator , the original rom and a patch file taking you about 10 to 15 minutes or so. That’s longer than my attention span.
Anyway in Pokémon Sweet version.. which is free to play, you travel to CandyLand, where roads are made out of fudge and the grass is not covered with dew but with frosting. Instead of trees cupcakes will grow and instead of fences people use candy canes. You live in rural Cookie Village where the road has been eaten by a woman. Because you are bored you decided to walk inside Professor Cinna’s lab, who was wanting to give her three apprentices a so called pokésweet. Yet one of them overslept.. your friend and rival ‘placeholder name Garysprite’ so she decides to give you a pokésweet instead. Pokésweets are like pokémon..but sweeter they like to be eaten and grow back after they do. You can choose from Brownisaur the Cherry and Chocolate flavoured brownie, Strawmander the strawberry headed and tailed lizard and Squirpie the apple pie with a turtle body. Alongside your Pokésweet you are sent on a mission to catch all the other sweets to complete the cookbook for the good professor. Meanwhile you can obtain some gym badges from other pokésweet users so you can compete to be the pokésweet champion housed at Cake Castle. Pretty sweet right?
Well not everything is great in the land of Candyland! An evil team named Team Sour is after the secret of rare candies and wants to manipulate the two deities of the land , who happen to be two chocolate bunnies, to get their evil ways. It is up to your to salvage the rare candies and save Chocobun and Dark Chocobun.. the last one is like Chocobun but edgier. Team Sour is not the only obstacle in your way though, there is also the dreaded Candy Pirates who want all the pokésweets for themselves and their pink little outfits. Instead of pokémon typings each pokésweet has flavours, including but not limited too, vanilla chocolat , blueberry lime and orange! As flavours clash you’ll have to create a good enough flavor profile to overcome even the toughest of trainers, while harder than the original fire red.. victory in this game is double as sweet
The Atmosphere
While Candyland is basicly Kanto but from Candy one would suspect a bit of a lazy copy past but nothing is further from the truth. This game is such a treat to play. With a lot of attention to detail. There’s about 150ish pokésweets but rather than the original 150 it takes pokémon from all across the first five generations to create the ultimate sweets. A lot of moves have been renamed , retyped and refitted to pokémon for optimal enjoyment. Instead of Snorlax knowing Rest and Snore.. we get Smorelax.. the marshmallow pokésweet that restores his health by using Zest, and while it sleeps it can use the move S’more to harm his foes. Strawizard learns to use Fruit Punch and Squirt Pie can use Apple Toss. While a Pokésweet can still get burned , fall asleep or be paralysed they would not go poisonous as it would harm the flavour of the world. Instead a Pokésweet can go hungry and will begin to nom itself.
There is no ocean to swim on.. instead the sea is replaced by cream.. the lakes are filled with grape juice. Not a single element is out of place in Pokémon Sweet version. The number of items has been drastically reduced, most of the unnatural stuff is gone, replaced by extra rare candies, lemonades and berries. Berries can be used in the regular way to heal status or health.. but they can also be used to BAKE new Pokésweets. That’s right some Pokesweets you can only obtain by gathering the right ingredients and baking one. Every single cookbook entry has been customly made and they are all adorable!
Spinacake for example spins vanilla cake for unwilling visitors. Piestoise has grown candy cane cannons which it uses to fire muffins at his opponents to make them happy again.Chocowool loves hugs.. but when you hug it it can leave blobs of chocolate on your clothes.
It’s all just how it should be. Very sweet!
The people are loving and helpful and help to flesh out this quirky world out greatly. The custom soundtrack can be a bit repetitive. The Mario Kart Snes music plays a bit too oftenly.. but I kinda like it. It makes the journey feel cute rather than epic and that is exactly what it should aim for. At times you feel it has been made by a small team and they went like… just fit this in here and it’s going to be fine but that is perfectly understandable and excusable for a romhack. I’ve seen rom hacks break down regions and completely building their own.. but such a journey was never these guys ambition nor would it have worked this well. This game is so different that the safety of where to go next felt like a warm blanket. This game is about the pokésweets and gathering them.. not to tell a compelling and grand tale. Team Sour and Candy Pirates! This game knows what it is and what its want you to do… and it does that very well and in it’s very own charming way.
Technical Thingies
Now Rom Hacks are a bit different when it comes down to judging the technical thingies. They are not professional games, but unlike fully created custom games the skeleton is there so there should not be to much errors there in the first place anyway. Yet at the same time because it’s not their own code .. things can conflict much easier. Overall I’d say Sweet Version does a great job. The flavor system ..which is way more than just a name swap from the other games (as there’s only 12 flavors) and all weaknesses are custom. For example Banana and Lemon are weak to each other, which we’ve never seen in a regular pokémon game. The game feels mostly balanced though the chocolate type is quite powerful and the orange flavour has quite a few weaknesses. I am not sorry how the balance is as I can not play with every little sweet and the type chart is a bit more ungraspable than the typing chart.
I can imagine why water beats fire.. or how grass beats water. Deducing why Apple beat Orange or why raspberry beats blueberry is somewhat less natural. As a result the sense of balance is gone a bit.. but I do not mean that in a bad way…it’s like pokémon battling without the training wheels. The game definitely spiced up in terms of difficulty but in a good way. Trainers who stick to one pokésweet will usually outlevel you if you commit to a entire team. This make sense because in a way it enforces the rules of the game on the npc’s. Solid design but it does mean you’ll need a bunch of items or a lots of trips to the pokésweet center. Baking the Pokésweets works perfectly which are new mechanics they build in.. now you get locked into a gym and have to finish it in one go works like a charm and all those little things work wonders. Dialogue however has a few oversights. Quite a few trainers have their old dialogue intact. Mostly the one you never really notice unless you talk to them after combatting. But because this world is so new I talked to them all.. and I noticed quite a few of them slipped up and broke the suspense of disbelief. Some stores are a bit glitchy because items have been added or removed. Since emulation can already result in a few glitches I am not sure what I can and can’t blame on them so since it’s nothing that stops me from playing or even hinders me I don’t mind it too much. It just looks a bit sloppy. Like a bit of whip cream spilling out of desert. Still tastes good even if it doesn’t look like it’s supposed too.
The Gameplay
Delicious as this game might be, it is not for the faint of heart. Pokémon Sweet version is pretty hard. I try to spend as little money on items as i possibly could but in Sweet version I carry a lot of medicine on me because the game wants me too. Not only do we get locked inside gyms and whiting out means repeating ALL the trainers also the moves we work with are drastically reduced. Pokésweets are less offensive than Pokémon, they have limited good attacks. Instead nearly every sweet gets access to status inducing moves. Nearly every trainer battle is also a double battle, meaning you have to be prepared for two types or even two attacks onto a single sweet. With all that cream filling flying about I guess hitting moves is a lot harder as well because accuracy has proven to be quite a bit more of an issue. Not only can you toss sprinkles in your opponents eyes to make them less accurate, a lot of the 100% hitting moves are simply gone for more risky moves. This means you have to think a lot more about your actions and that’s good.
I enjoyed this battle system so much, reminding me more of classic rpgs where you rarely get a new attack other then a support type move here and there. I love how they changed obstacles around though. HM’s are as good as gone with only fly and surf still existing, though these other obstacles are all non consequential the no hm method allows us to be so much more free in what sweets we carry along. Gym’s are infinitely repeatable making grinding up levels a breeze as long as we skip those with annoying gym puzzles like the Blueberry gym. When I say skip I mean for the grind of course you have to complete it once. The game has been thusly altered that you can basically complete the entire cookbook yourself. All starters will become available and there are no trade evolutions. I still have to discover how to evolve some of these but it’s just a delight to see your babies grow up and read all their adorable pages. The plethora of status can be a bit annoying when you start but these are pokésweets not pokémon.. they don’t like attacking so it’s something you will just have to get used to. It’s different.. not worse..as long as you carry medicine at least.
It’s a long game, longer than the same run would take you in Pokémon Fire Red (the rom it’s based on), a lot longer. Pokésweets are super cute and you will be very tempted to try them all out the way they designed the game also means that you actually get better things to put on your team as you get along. Some sweets will get outdated or outclassed or just outlived. You’ll need to level quite a bit more than in the legitimate game but you’ll be given plenty of options for it as well. So while it does require some effort of you as a player this game features enough content to sink your teeth into.
The Verdict
Okay this game will not be a 10 out of 10 but it’s definitely something special. It’s something we will NEVER EVER see again and it’s something I have never seen before it. While other Rom Hacks change the game.. in some cases better than this little game, Pokémon Sweet version reinvents the entire concept. Recognisable to keep the old charm while innovating enough to add a whole lot of sweetness. I can not in good conscious gave a game as cute as this where you walk onto a pink world anything lower than my highest ranking! This game is my soul emulated. Feel free to disagree .. but this game is sweet.
What do you think about Pokémon Sweet Version? Did you ever play a rom hack? Do you have any suggestion for me to play? Let me know in the comments and I will see you all in the next post!
The Pinkest Poké Blogger is blasting off again!
XO
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